An Announcement and a Change

March 21, 2019By Mahtab Rezai

Life is full of surprises. Some good, some bad. This September I was handed a giant surprise of the bad variety: a cancer diagnosis.

Over the last six months, many things have become clear to me- and among them is this: I genuinely love user experience consulting and conducting user research. It is work that inspires me, invigorates me, and gets me (joyfully) out of bed in the morning. Through six months of this cancer fight, it has continued to provide purpose to my days and has truly been a source of solace when I want to just be “me” and not merely a cancer patient.

Something else that has become clear over the last six months is that at this stage in my healing and recovery, I have “consultant” energy to give- not “entrepreneur” energy.

As fulfilling as doing user experience consulting work is, the business of being a small business owner (submitting payroll, sending invoices, preparing financials, dealing with insurance audits, etc. etc.) has become draining and harder for me to enthusiastically give my time and energy to. While I am able to find the energy and motivation to tackle user experience problems, I find that I am drained when it comes to the type of tasks that are involved with owning and running a small business. And at this time in my life it is critical that I reserve as much energy as possible to fight cancer. Therefore I’ve made the decision to leave Crux Collaborative in order to focus on my health and on the UX consulting work that brings me joy.

The last eight years of owning and running a business have been a profound, transformative, amazing experience. I am grateful to John and Emily for giving me the opportunity to be a business owner and partner. I will always cherish the experience of working with John to transform and re-create a business from the ground up, to create and evolve everything anew: from the name, to the guiding principles, to the culture, to the service offerings and process. It has been an experience that I learned a tremendous amount from and that I will always cherish. But it is time for me to move on.

I am profoundly grateful to each and everyone of you who I had the privilege of working with and for, of collaborating with, of learning from, of laughing with and forming friendships with.

It is a small town and a tight knit industry and I have no doubt I will see- and possibly work with- many of you again in the coming years when I have finished (and won) my cancer battle. Please don’t hesitate to reach out and stay in touch. You can always find me on LinkedIn.

In the meantime, John and the rest of the team are here and continue to be ready and excited to collaborate with you. Crux Collaborative has very much been a labor of love for me and I cannot wait to see all that they accomplish in the coming years.

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